At 5:59 a.m. on Sept. 30, 2015 — only one minute after the first train was scheduled to leave Christie Station — the Toronto Transit Commission’s Bloor-Danforth line was already delayed.

It wasn’t the best way to start the day. And it got worse.

First, the train at Christie was late entering service, stopping riders for four minutes. Less than an hour later, a train at Lansdowne stopped for three minutes because of an unattended box. (Transit officials examined it and found nothing inside.) At Kennedy, 11 minutes later, a train was delayed for three minutes because it was speeding. Just before 9 a.m., an ill rider activated the emergency alarm at Bloor, stalling riders for another three minutes.

[np_storybar title=”Inside the TTC war room: The hidden hands that try to keep Toronto’s subways moving” link=”http://news.nationalpost.com/features/inside-the-ttc-war-room”%5D From transit control centre, a team of 86 TTC employees is tasked with keeping subways, streetcars and buses running on time 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. According to internal targets, a train must appear every two minutes and 21 seconds. Transit control moves things along by rerouting trains in the opposite direction or onto another line, calling police to respond to emergencies, recovering signals and deploying mechanics. [/np_storybar]

There were another 12 delays more than two minutes in length between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m across the system. The longest the TTC was able to go without a delay was 76 minutes.

And then, at 6:53 p.m., a man killed himself by jumping in front of a train at St. George. It was a tragic but all-too-common scene for the TTC, which saw 11 suicides and five attempts in 2015. There was a 110-minute service suspension between Ossington and Broadview, cutting service to the heart of downtown Toronto. Even after the delay was cleared, it would take the rest of the night to get trains back on schedule.

The TTC was scrambling again at 10:08 p.m., when a passenger reported that a man was carrying a gun inside a train at Victoria Park. Trains were delayed for 13 minutes. The “gun” turned out to be a toy; police charged the man for public intoxication.

There were a total of 24 different delays on Sept. 30 — the highest single-day number for Toronto’s transit organization during its peak season between September and November in 2015. Despite TTC efforts, the numbers exemplify a growing problem.

Map by Monika Warzecha

In anticipation of this year’s busy season for the TTC, a National Post investigation shows that there were 1,190 delays affecting the Yonge-University, Bloor-Danforth and Sheppard lines during the same time period in 2015. (The data only tracks delays of two-or-more minutes in length.) The Post obtained the data from the TTC, translated a list of detailed codes and placed each incident into simple categories to better understand what’s causing the delays.

Between September to November 2015, subways were delayed for a total of 7,301 minutes, or more than five days in total. The average delay was six minutes in length.

Terminus stations — those at the ends of the lines — are by far the worst hit by delays. More than six per cent — 76 delays — happened at Kennedy. Kipling followed with 49, while Downsview (36 delays) and Finch (35 delays) were also in the top ten. Yorkdale and Bessarion had the fewest, accumulating only three delays each in the three months.

“If we could provide a perfect service every day, we could be on the beach drinking mojitos at 3 p.m., every afternoon because the world is rosy,” Mike Palmer, the TTC’s acting chief operating officer, said. “When we don’t provide a good service, we are genuinely sorry.”

The number of total subway delays across the three lines increased from 17,574 in 2014 to 19,119 in 2015, according to internal TTC reports obtained by the Post. Only service on Line 1 improved, according to the report, with more than 1,000 fewer delays. Riders say they aren’t seeing improvements, and worry that a lack of funding will only continue to worsen their commute.

Fare hikes, on top of the delays, aren’t winning passengers over, either. In March 2015, the price of an adult monthly pass increased to $141.50 from $133.75. Both the adult monthly pass and tokens have risen by 30 per cent since 2009. Cash fares were later increased by 25 cents in January to $3.25.

The fare hikes may be contributing to a dip in ridership. According to a July report, the TTC had 250.3 million riders between January and June 2016 — 200,000 fewer than it had at the same time in 2015, and seven million fewer than what had been budgeted for this year. With the city asking the TTC for 2.6 per cent budget cuts, a new fare hike is on the table.

“The reason they’re losing their ridership is their service is so bad,” Lacey Juk, a TTC rider, said outside Ossington. “I think they need to fix that problem before it snowballs and gets worse.”

TTC CEO Andy Byford has heard the feedback on subway delays. He rides the trains to work every day and said he’ll “take the hit” with customer complaints in person.

More than 28 per cent of delays were caused by customers being injured or falling ill on trains, heading down to track level or being disorderly. Customers seen toting guns on trains and in stations by staff and other riders accounted for eight delays over the three months. Riders were involved in several physical altercations, including six incidents where TTC employees were assaulted.

Customers also falsely activated emergency alarms 54 times.

While Palmer said he can’t stop customers from pushing the emergency alarm or fainting on trains, the TTC can reduce the amount of time it takes to respond.

“There are things outside our grasp, but even if somebody goes for a walk down a tunnel or hits an emergency alarm, how quickly we respond can impact the length of that delay,” Palmer said.

Darren Calabrese/National Post

There is room for improvement, at least with the delays caused by mechanical and infrastructure issues, Palmer admits. Mechanical and infrastructure issues accounted for 25 per cent of delays — 308 in three months — with trains stopped because of door, air conditioning or brake issues.

The signalling system is out of date, and the T1 trains on the Bloor-Danforth line are 17 years old. A majority of the cabling is old and so is the substation equipment, he said. There are 300 sites in the system suffering from leaks, with the tracks at risk of flooding when it rains. Some of the systems are run by the “equivalent of a Dell computer,” Byford added.

The smallest debris can clog door tracks and bring an entire train to a halt. During the summer months, it’s usually caused by popsicle sticks. During a recent subway trip, Palmer solved a delay himself, he said, after fishing out a dime stuck in the door tracks with a pen.

Christopher Katsarov for National Post

While Palmer frequently works with one set of TTC employees at transit control to stop delays from happening, another set of employees are racking them up. TTC employees caused 14 per cent of delays — 128 — in the three months. Crews and operators were frequently not available to operate trains, causing nearly 150 minutes of delays. Bathroom breaks taken by crew members caused riders to be delayed for another 143 minutes. Byford said that sometimes crews are late for changeovers because they’re being stopped by other delays. Errors such as operators overshooting platforms or speeding also resulted in trains coming to a halt.

Palmer said crew members drive in from as far as Kingston and St. Catharines every day, but admits there’s “high absenteeism” among drivers. Eight drivers on one line called in to work on Aug. 19 for an “emergency day of vacation,” he said.

And then there’s the unexplainable: an operator spotted a “grenade” on the tracks at Victoria Park on Sept. 17. On Oct. 10, an owl attacked an operator who opened a window on a train at Royal York. Three days earlier, a crew found syringes and spoons inside a train at Sherbourne and put it out of service. On Nov. 17, a completely naked man wandered onto a train at Coxwell.

Over the three months, there were also nine bomb threats — including one made by a “female child” who told employees: “There is a bomb.” That incident resulted in a 10-minute delay.

The TTC wrote a five-year plan in 2015 to reduce delays by 50 per cent by 2019. A new software system coming in November should reduce the amount of delays caused by speed control — a safety mechanism used to warn operators they’re speeding and then automatically activate emergency brakes if they don’t slow down — by 25 per cent overnight across all lines. The current system is “over sensitive” and results in unwarranted delays. There were 36 speed control related delays in 2015’s peak season.

A new automatic train control system, which will allow computers to control the speed and distance between each train, will begin replacing the outdated block signal system on Line 1 in the fall of 2017 and should significantly reduce delays. The current system relies on signals — red meaning it’s dangerous to proceed and green meaning it’s safe. It’s sensitive, and delays are often caused by faulty readings. During peak season in 2015, there were 48 signal-related delays. Speed-control delays will also be completely eliminated on Line 1 when the new system is implemented in its entirety, according to the TTC.

For delays caused by mechanical and infrastructure issues, “money is the quick fix,” Palmer said.

According to its 2016 operating budget, the TTC receives what it said is the lowest operating subsidy for a transit organization in North America, earning only 89 cents per rider. In comparison, the TTC said that Montreal transit gets $1.11, Vancouver receives $1.76 and Edmonton $1.75. About 70 per cent of the TTC’s operating budget is funded by fares, while the remaining 30 per cent comes from the subsidy. Palmer said the TTC needs a sustained investment from the three levels of government.

What’s your delay? Choose your station to see what’s holding you up for work:

Interactive by Brice Hall

In 2015, the City of Toronto invested $90 million for streetcar and bus service improvements and $45 million this year in operating costs. But this year, the city is also asking all of its departments — including the TTC — to make 2.6 per cent budget reductions. The TTC said it would have to find $231 million in savings to meet the mayor’s request.

A spokesperson from the mayor’s office said Tory knows about the TTC subway delays and the frustration of being caught in them because he rides it to work “almost every day.” As for the budget cuts, the mayor’s office said “spending money wisely” can be beneficial to the public.

Byford said on Wednesday that he’ll be providing the city with a list of options to reach those cuts. A new round of fare hikes and service cuts will be on that list.

“When we’re talking about a figure as big as $231 million, it is impossible to reach that figure without impacting service,” Byford said.

Ontario’s provincial government only provides funding for operations through a small share of the gas tax, Byford said. The province — much like the federal government — focuses on capital funding used for long-term projects such as building new subway stations or updating tracks and other mechanical systems. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in May that the TTC would receive $840 million of the $1.48 billion set aside for Ontario projects in the Federal Public Transit Infrastructure Fund. The money is set to go toward mechanical and infrastructure repairs and upgrades.

The TTC currently has $6.3 billion of the $9.4 billion it said it will cost to update the signal system, upgrade subways and purchase new vehicles between 2017 and 2026, according to its 2016 proposed capital budget report. Using a total of $1.2 billion it expects to receive from the Federal Public Transit Infrastructure Fund, according to its proposed capital budget report, and $900 million in budget reductions, the TTC is still left with $1 billion in unfunded capital projects.

Interviewed during their commutes at subway stations across the city, riders complained about constant delays and what they see as a lack of funding. Many have gotten so used to subway delays that they’re no longer surprised when an announcement breaks up their commute.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

“It’s my understanding that the TTC is very, very underfunded,” Juk said. “If that’s the case, (improving delays) is probably a matter of money.”

Juk said she gets a case of “commuter rage” every time she takes the subway from Ossington to Eglinton West and is stopped by a delay. She gives herself 15 minutes extra per ride and uses an app called TTC Watch to receive alerts on ongoing delays, but is still frustrated by her inability to get to work on time.

Three years ago, she was able to bike to a different job downtown. She didn’t have to buy a monthly pass from April to September.

“I was so much happier in life,” she said. “I saved money and got exercise. It was so much better than taking the subway.”

Ashwyn Fernandes wasn’t surprised when he heard how many delays there were between September and November 2015.

“It sounds like an average day in Toronto to me, let’s be honest,” Fernandes said on the platform at St. George.

Fernandes said he sits through at least 1-2 delays per week on his daily trips from McCowan, the last stop on the Scarborough RT, to St. George. He said he was once stuck at Pape for 40 minutes during a delay that started with an emergency alarm being pulled.

During a ride from Wilson to St. George, Edmund Li said his ride is “relatively smooth.” He was cut off when an announcement informed riders of an emergency alarm at Lawrence West.

“Perfect timing,” he said. “Now it’s not even surprising.” He’s cut off moments later once again by another announcement: “To ensure safety, this subway train will operate slower than normal.”

“I keep trying to defend the TTC and give a balanced review, but I just keep getting delay announcements,” he said, laughing.

When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said 'Hello' and started to ask if this was a prank

This Week's Flyers

Comments

Postmedia is pleased to bring you a new commenting experience. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. Visit our community guidelines for more information.